


Remember Me

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Afterlife, Death, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carolina won't be forgotten this time, in this life or the next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember Me

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Season 13 Episode 11, sort of.
> 
> Background Carolina/Kimball.

She looks the way Carolina remembers: uncommonly bright blue eyes, wavy gold hair pulled back in a loose braid, jeans and tennis shoes and that gray UNSC t-shirt she always wore when she was home on leave.

“ _Mom_ ,” Carolina gasps, and those strong arms are around her and she has her face buried in that shoulder, and she even  _smells_  the same. Not a single thing is off about her, not the softness of her cheek or the way her hair tapers and curls at the end of the braid or her voice. Everything is  _right_  and the only different is Carolina’s the same height as her.

“Too soon, baby,” her mother whispers, her voice low but not breaking, squeezing her almost too tight to breathe. Dimly, she figures that probably doesn’t matter. “God, it’s too soon. Too long, but still too soon.”

“Twenty years,” Carolina murmurs, still breathing in her mother’s scent. “Give or take. You’re exactly the same.”

“I know,” Allison says, and this time her voice does crack a little. Carolina’s breath catches in her throat because she can’t remember if it ever did that. That she heard, or was supposed to hear. Maybe during the fights, maybe through two closed doors. “That’s because you remember. You remember me how I was.” She draws back, her hands on Carolina’s shoulders. “Let me look at you. God, you’re all grown up. My strong girl.”

Carolina breaks her gaze away. She’s in her armor, she realizes. Strange that she didn’t feel it when her mother was hugging her. “I’m not…” She can still feel the sensation of skidding, falling. “I couldn’t…”

“Mallory Jo,” her mother says firmly, and Carolina’s eyes snap back up instinctually. “You remember what I used to say to your father, don’t you?”

Carolina cracks a wry smile. “‘Tell it to the Marines?’”

“Damn right.” Her mom grins, and Carolina sees, suddenly, around her neck–was it there before?–the silver ball chain, dipping beneath the gray collar, and she remembers with uncanny vividness the sensation of running her little fingers over the raised letters, ALLISON, BETHANY J. “Lot of Marines over here.”

“I guess there would be.”

Her mother reaches up to touch her fiery bangs, falling in her eyes as always. “Red, huh?”

Now it’s Carolina’s turn to smile. “Yeah. Dad hated it.”

“It suits you.” Her mother studies her face thoughtfully, then her eyes travel down to the armor. “And this color. Always loved it on you.”

She straightens, feeling a small swell of pride, in spite of everything. “About Dad…”

Her mother just shakes her head.

“How do you… ”

“Forgive?" Her mom looks straight into her eyes. Hers so blue. "You figure it out, darlin’, you let me know.”

“You haven’t?”

“Maybe in a thousand years.” Her mother’s sigh is heavy. “What he did to you… I can forgive the rest. But you, honey. You were my morning star…”

Carolina swallows hard, doesn’t answer. The indistinct space feels cold suddenly.

“Were you scared?”

Funny how she feels the old hackles rise, just at the question. Funny how badly she wants to say, “Of course not.” The fall swirls in her stomach, dizzy in her head, and she feels for a moment like the ground’s dropped out from under her feet once again.

She says, “Yeah.”

“I was, too,” her mom says, with a wry half-smile, and the dizziness falls away and she feels steady again. “Don’t you tell anyone.” Her eyes crinkle at the corners and Carolina finds herself focusing on that, trying to pin down how old her mother looks, exactly. It’s hard to tell. “Did you sing?”

Carolina snorts. “Mom, I don’t sing.”

“Bullcrap–”

“And you don’t have to say  _crap_ , I’m twenty-eight–”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how we used to sing.”

“I was a little kid! And even then I couldn’t carry a tune in a backpack.”

“Come on.” Her mother takes her by both hands. Callouses worn in her palms, on the pads of her fingers. Carolina has some to match. “ _Sing your way home, at the close of the day…”_

“Mom.”

“ _Sing your way home, drive the shadows away…”_

Carolina finds herself chiming in in spite of herself, characteristically off-key. “ _Smile every mile, for wherever you roam, it will lighten your load, it will brighten your road, if you sing your way home.”_

Her mother breaks into a wide grin. “That’s my girl.”

Carolina smiles too, though something tugs at her, because this isn’t  _home_ , exactly. Not really. But what ever was. She thinks of Vanessa, thinks of how she never said goodbye. Never said a lot of things. She hopes what she did do was enough. That Vanessa knew…

Her mother studies her some more. Nods. “Thinking of someone?”

“Yeah.”

“You had friends. People you loved?”

Friends. Carolina thinks of the Reds and Blues, Wash, the Chorus kids. Vanessa. She swallows. “Yeah.”

“That’s good.” Her mother nods. “They’ll remember you.”

Carolina chokes back an actual sob, sudden and startling (how long has it been since she actually cried?) and almost falls forward into her mother’s arms again. They’re there to catch her, steady and rocksolid as they always were. “I failed them. I wasn’t good enough–”

“Honey,” her mother says, holding her tight. “Listen to me. You are good enough. You were  _always_  good enough.”

* * *

 

When it’s all over, when there’s time enough to grieve at last, her name is one of the many engraved on the memorial wall in Armonia Square.  _Agent Carolina_ for the public memorial. Wash and Kimball decide on a burial “at sea,” so to speak–a Spock-style sendoff, the way plenty of war veterans choose to go these days, and it seems right.

Kimball’s been holding it together pretty well, all things considered, though her face carries the weight of grief in every line and shadow. Wash gives her the tags in private after the service, and is about to excuse himself but Kimball reads the name aloud, before he can leave.

“She never told me her real name,” Kimball says quietly.

“Maybe… she would have,” Wash says, awkwardly. He’s never been great at the whole comfort thing. “Eventually.”

“Maybe.” Kimball rubs her thumb over the tags. “You knew?”

“I knew. Not that I was… supposed to know, exactly. It’s complicated.”

“No, it’s… good. It’s good that someone remembers.”

Wash shrugs, looks away. “I remember a lot of things.”

Kimball nods. “Thank you. This means a lot, Wash.” She folds the ball chain into her palm before tucking the tags carefully into the pocket of her dress uniform. “I won’t forget.”


End file.
